Electric
by if.i.dared.you
Summary: People think Gary's just a psychopath with ADD - but what tortured secrets lie beneath the exterior facade?
1. Electric

**Author's Note: **I wrote this while listening to Electric Feel by MGMT - yes, this is the second time I've been influenced by a song! Anyway, this was written as an alternate ending to Chapter Five in the game - things went differently and Jimmy and Gary ended up... Amiable, at least. I just thought I should mention it because certain references don't make sense normally. ;) See you soon!

Gary sits at the bleachers, watching the swimmers glide lithely through the water. Like fish, he thinks. A genius, sitting here, watching fish.

He hasn't been taking meds. He likes this feeling. After the anger, after the rush, comes the quiet. Like death, he thinks.

Like death.

He sees patterns in places others can't. In the water, he can see the wake of every swimmer, like a tail. Every one has a different colour. It's beautiful, although he doesn't think that way. Everything that tries to be beautiful is just a failure of true perfection.

Medication. Ha. The nurse said it would make him normal. That was what he wanted, right? To be normal. Like he ever would. He was a genius. And geniuses didn't need medication.

He'd said that once, to a girl he knew.

Yes, Persephone.

She left Bullworth during Gary's first term, when he was fourteen.

It's coming back now. A sad echo of the pain he used to feel before.

He remembers feeling... Happy when she came to talk to him. He knew she was scared of him at first, although this was before he got that scar.

He remembers it quite clearly now.

He remembers the cornsilk yellow of her hair, and the leafy green of her eyes. She always listened to Gary.

For once, Gary wasn't afraid to tell her everything.

The first time Gary saw Persephone, she stood out from the crowd. He wasn't taking his medication, just like now. He could see volts of electricity running over her skin, like blue veins. It was intensely beautiful, just like now. And he could see the electricity running to a point in her arm, like a scar. A trail of colour. Just. Like. Now.

This was why Gary didn't take his medication.

He wanted to hark back to the days when he could see beauty in everything. Persephone was why that had happened. He could still remember her face... And what she would always say.

_"Gary, you must take your medication."_

_"Why? I like feeling this way. I'm a genius. Geniuses don't need medication."  
_

_"Oh, you think?"_

_"Yeah, I think."  
_

_"Gary, be nice. Take your medication."_

_"I don't want to."_

_And she'd take his face in her hands, and look at him through those exquisite green eyes._

_"I like you better when you take your medication."_

Gary now knew that this wasn't true. As the colour from the pool flooded his vision, he could see it clearer now.

She was scared of what he'd become when he didn't take his meds.

He's falling. He feels anger, depression, rage, unquantifiable evil battling inside him, boiling his blood. He can feel the pressure rising in his skull.

He knows it's coming.

The scary part.

The part where he remembers most clearly the exquisite, excrutiating pain that came when he'd been abandoned by the only person he'd ever truly considered a friend.

Sometimes it would last days, this midnight purple fog. Sometimes, only seconds.

But when it happened, Gary could justify his actions.

He could justify what he'd done to Jimmy Hopkins. He could think through what he did to Petey.

Most of all, he could understand why he'd cut himself, that scar on his brow.

In the exact mirror of _hers._

_Persephone._

He's sinking, deeper and deeper into unconscious. He realizes he won't come out of this, but he doesn't care. After this, he can be with Persephone forever, inside his mind, with no ADD, no scars, no pain, no abandonment.

He welcomes the darkness, and he feels the awful, awful depression enveloping him.

It's for Persephone, he tells himself. He can be with her now.

And he's gone. Lying sprawled across the bleachers with blood spouting from his head and his arms thrown by his sides.

_Persephone._


	2. Run

_She's running, running so hard but the beast is gaining ground._

_Getting ever closer, closer, closer evermore._

_Her white nightgown catches on the black thorns caked with blood. She knows that it's too close, far too close and that she has few precious seconds left._

_The beast bursts from the trees, trembling with savage bloodlust, twisted cries of anguish issuing from its jaws._

_And she gasps._

_Because it's not a beast at all._

_It's a girl in a torn white dress, bright green eyes wide and wild with anger. She advances on Persephone, her pale fingers outstretched, grasping, muttering in an unearthly growl..._

"_You left him," she rasps, her bloodstained teeth escaping snowy pale lips, "You left him."_

_She tries to scream but the beast takes her voice and tears her apart._

_* * *_

Persephone sits up hard in bed, a gasp almost escaping her dry mouth before she keeps it in check. She clamps a cold, sweaty palm over her lips, breathing hard. She feels the burning in her lungs as her muscles contort and contract, trying to focus on it instead of the terror inside her mind, overriding every natural instinct. She pushes away the sheets.

She wants to _run._

Escape from the menacing presence ripping her apart whenever she let her guard down.

Get away from the beast.

Evade her death.

But she cannot change it now.

She's not dead. But she wishes she was. Every breath is bated for her, every day is hard. Her conscience is destroying her, piece by little piece.

How could she have left him when he so obviously depended on her?

All she sees is absolute horror.

Every time she blinks.

Every time.

She's got to go back. She can't live like this. She swore to herself it would be easy once she got used to it. But for three painful years she's thought of nothing but the fact that she left him.

She steals a glance back her mother, fast asleep in the bed she shares with Persephone, and slips from the room. She stalks out the front door in nothing but her torn white nightgown.

_Now she can run._

Run back. All the way back.


End file.
